Read data from a pdf file

[Anonymous]

Hi All,

Is there any way or any extension available to read data from a pdf file,

just like we use to read from other sources as excel , or db etc..

[Anonymous]

No, but there are converters from PDF to Excel.

[rbecher]

Interesting.. Could you post an example PDF file to understand the use case?

- Ralf

[brijesh1991]

Interesting. . . Could you post an example PDF file to understand the use case?
-Brijesh

[Anonymous]

PFA a sample.........

[rbecher]

Hi Nitin,

this is quite a long road.. You can do it with a file conversion using pdftohtml.exe from Sourceforge:

// Set path of source file
Set vPath = C:\Projekte\QVPDF\;

// Set amount of columns
Set vCols = 2;

// convert PDF file to XML
EXECUTE cmd.exe /C pdftohtml.exe -xml $(vPath)sample.pdf;

// Load from XML (this is very dependent from PDF layout!)
RawData:
LOAD text%Table as value
FROM [$(vPath)sample.xml] (XmlSimple, Table is [pdf2xml/page/text]);

// Load field names from header for later renaming
HeaderMap:
Mapping First $(vCols) LOAD '@' & RecNo() as x,  value as y
Resident RawData;

// build a proper input table
InputTable:
LOAD ceil(RecNo()/2)-1 as %key, if(Mod(RecNo(),2)>0, '@1', '@2') as attribute, value
Resident RawData
Where RecNo()>$(vCols);

// generic load from input table
GenTable:
Generic LOAD * Resident InputTable;

// consolidation of tables created by generic load
ResultTable:
LOAD Distinct %key Resident InputTable;

FOR i = 0 to NoOfTables()
TableList:
LOAD TableName($(i)) as Tablename AUTOGENERATE 1
WHERE WildMatch(TableName($(i)), 'GenTable.*');
NEXT i

FOR i = 1 to FieldValueCount('Tablename')
LET vTable = FieldValue('Tablename', $(i));
LEFT JOIN (ResultTable) LOAD * RESIDENT [$(vTable)];
DROP TABLE [$(vTable)];
NEXT i

DROP TABLES RawData, TableList, InputTable;

RENAME Fields Using HeaderMap;

To run an external command you have to do these settings:

Open dialog by Shift-Ctrl-M:

- Ralf

[#7]

HI,

I have done this to fetch data from voter list provided in government site.

As the files are in pdf format, i used a weeny free excel convertor  to convert it in excel format.

Now you can easily load excel files in QV.

Regards

Arun

[#8]

hi Ralf ,

this is really interesting. its working

great !

[jerrysvensson]

I happened to download this file.

DON'T

Win32/Vigram.A virus

[nurettinsahin]

hi Ralp,

I ran the samples you submitted. but I got the error below. Could there be a problem with the version? Qlikview version 12.20

Error text:

The top level of the document is invalid.

On line number: 2. On column number: 11. System ID: sample.xml.

RawData:
LOAD text%Table as value
FROM [C:\PDFtoQVD\sample.xml] (XmlSimple, Table is [pdf2xml/page/text])